Strippers

Hey, it’s Zack. Before we get started, I just want to let you know that we’re covering some adult topics in this episode. If you’re listening with kids, you might want to skip this one. Alright, on with the show.

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LAYLA: Everyone has their, like, all-time greatest night. My all time greatest night was $10K. I think most strippers who’ve danced at a big city club have one night that’s just crazy and they make a lot of money.

That’s Layla. She’s a stripper in New York City. Before that, she worked in Texas, which is where her all-time greatest night took place.

LAYLA: It was me and three other girls and one guy. We had an after hours B.Y.O.B. club that could stay open. We took the guy there and we were there probably until like, I want to say 9:00 or 10:00 in the morning. And so we just ran that guy up. 

That night was an outlier for Layla. But the possibility of that kind of windfall is part of the allure for women who go into exotic dancing. And although ten-thousand-dollar nights are rare, strippers can still do pretty well on a regular basis.

LAYLA: I would say the average night when things are good, I think for me is around $800 to $1000. An average that I aim for is $500. If I make $500, I’m happy. 

Performers like Layla are almost always independent contractors. In a lot of ways stripping is like any other form of self-employment. There are overhead costs, seasonal trends, sales tactics. And a constant adjustment to what the market demands.

LAYLA: This is actually, I feel like, the greatest danger to the future of strip clubs — the demographic that is becoming middle aged wants something different. 

For the Freakonomics Radio Network, this is The Economics of Everyday Things. I’m Zachary Crockett. Today: strippers.

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Like many of her colleagues, Layla started dancing in college. She was 21 years old at the time, she had friends who were already dancing, and it seemed like a good way to make some money. At first, she thought she’d only be doing it for a little while.

LAYLA: I didn’t really think about it a lot when I started. And then I kind of just couldn’t find what I wanted to do after and so I started dancing full time. And then the pandemic happened, and I applied to grad school and I just kind of continued dancing because I was used to it. And it’s a great job to have when you’re in school. 

Stripping works well for students because the hours are typically pretty flexible.

LAYLA: You choose when you work. Some clubs do have a schedule, but that’s pretty rare. You’re an independent contractor. You just show up. 

But most strippers aren’t graduate students — and the work has advantages for them, too.

LAYLA: I would say 80 percent of the girls are not, you know, like me. They have a very different socioeconomic background. A lot of them are not citizens. And with dancing, there’s not as much regulation. Like, you need a Social Security card, but some clubs you can dance even if your immigration status isn’t solid. You need to live. And dancing can allow for that. 

At many clubs, the one thing you need to do to dance is pass an audition.

LAYLA: They ask you basic questions about whether you’ve danced before, how long you’ve been dancing, “Do you live in the city?” And then, you know, they just kind of want you to go on stage and get naked. Sometimes they just ask you to work a night and then at the end, they’ll tell you whether you stay or not. Usually they just make you go on a little stage. You do like half a dance. The manager says yes or no.

Layla has danced at clubs in Austin, Houston, and Manhattan, and she says the financial arrangements have been pretty similar in each place.

LAYLA: When we enter the club we have a house fee. That can vary — it’s dependent on the time you enter the club.

The house fee is the equivalent of a hairdresser renting a chair at a salon — they need a place to work, and strip clubs have a stage. Or, as it’s called in the industry, a floor.

LAYLA: The floor includes stage money, which is how the average person, I think, assumes strippers make money — you know, just people throwing money if you do tricks. 

In the club, the floor is more of a marketing tactic than a big money-maker. The majority of a stripper’s earnings are made off the stage.

LAYLA: Lap dances — they’re all cash and you keep all of it. And then there’s the VIP champagne room, that’s what you’re trying to sell. That’s what you work up to in a dance. That’s what you immediately try to sell when you walk in and if you think they’re like a whale or like they think they’re like a big baller. They have, like, the watch and everything. That’s the big money. It’s by hour. It can range — there are half hour rooms that are like $300, and then the hourly rooms, like the big rooms, are usually like $500. In a room you also want to sell a bottle because some clubs do give you a cut of the bottle sales if the champagne is worth enough money. So you have an incentive. And then you get a tip on top of that.

Illegal activity has been known to happen in the back rooms of some clubs.

LAYLA: I’m not saying I’ve done it. I’m not saying it happens in my club. But that’s where the stereotype of doing coke in a strip club comes off — you know, like a bunch of finance dudes will get a back room with a bunch of girls, do a bunch of coke. The girls kind of just, like, hang out, get naked, get lines done off of them. 

After the customers have paid up, the club takes around 15- to 20 percent of the room charge. The stripper keeps the rest — but she’s also expected to share some of her nightly earnings with other workers in the club.

LAYLA: Some clubs, you have a tip out fee. So, in order to leave, you have to pay the club. Some clubs want you to tip out the house mom, which is the lady who, like, manages the locker room. They want you to tip out the management or the DJ. Those are all additional sums to your house fee when you enter or exit, depending on the club. So you give the club a lot of money, and everything else we keep. 

Coupled with the house fee, all of these payouts mean that, on a bad night, a stripper might end up losing money to the club.

LAYLA: There are nights where you can leave negative. If bodies are not entering the club you’re not making money. I have worked at one club where in total I pay $200 to work there between all the fees. So, you know, you’re already -$200. And, like, there’s a lot of girls working! Like, let’s say 80 girls show up. It’s a Friday night. You know, there’s just not enough bodies in the room for you to sometimes make enough money to break even. Especially if it’s a slow season or — you know, customers feel your vibe as well. Because the big money is one on one. If you don’t have good energy it’s very difficult to make money. 

Strippers also have overhead costs. And many of those costs have to do with their appearance.

LAYLA: A lot of that has to do with hair. A lot of girls wear wigs. A lot of girls go blond. I have hair extensions. And I have naturally curly hair and so I straighten my hair a lot of times because it makes you more palatable. You want to look like what’s popular. And so you get plastic surgery. I’ve had a boob job. Most girls get boob jobs. Guys want boobs; guys want an ass. 

All that surgery isn’t cheap. The average cost of a breast augmentation is nearly $5,000. Many strippers also get what’s known as a Brazilian butt lift, which can run over $7,000. And then there are the ongoing expenses.

LAYLA: Makeup is pretty expensive now. And people get fillers. That’s like $800 minimum. We have to wear eight-inch heels or six-inch heels. The shoes cost money and they wear down. And you need lingerie. Some clubs have rules — like, I work at a club where you have to wear dresses, like, stripper dresses — which is funny if you think about it, that they want you to wear a dress, but you’re taking it off. And then you have regulation thongs. It’s a certain kind of G-string that is almost like a swimsuit material, and it doesn’t move on stage.

Stripping can take a physical toll, too.

LAYLA: The shoes are heavy. The pole will leave bruises all over your legs. A lot of times you learn how to sell without stage, but you still get worn down even from lap dances. It’s like doing squats in eight-inch heels for hours!

Even with these costs to their bodies and their bottom lines, strippers can make a nice living — nicer than in a lot of other industries. For a performer like Layla, earning $500 a night 4 nights a week can translate into a six-figure annual salary. And for a lot of strippers, dancing is just a side-gig. Many also have what they call “civilian jobs.” Layla has a master’s degree in public health from an Ivy League university.

LAYLA: For my civilian job, I work for a nonprofit that coordinates the STD screening for porn. So, it’s in sex work, it’s in the general field. And I got that because I was a stripper. In the beginning, you feel like you’re only going to do it for a certain amount of time. And so you kind of are, like, “Oh, I’m not going to do this like past 30.” But the money with dancing is a rush, it’s an adrenaline rush. So girls will try other things and then eventually come back. I still dance as a primary source of my income. I’m very aware that I will not make as much money in public health. I’m grateful I have a job that allows me to make enough money and I save and I invest. 

Layla says her experience as a stripper has been mostly positive. But the job does have its risks.

LAYLA: Bad things have happened to everybody in the club. I don’t think anybody has had a career where something bad has not happened. It’s just a risk of the job, that you’re in a back room with a drunk guy, alone. And, like, it’s a closed door. And a guy is bigger than you. And you’re both inebriated sometimes. You don’t even sometimes want to tell management because you don’t know if you’re going to be blamed. And when that happens to a girl, you know, I don’t think it’s the best response but sometimes you’re like, “This is just a reality of the job and you have to, like, get over it.” 

That job is evolving, and so is the strip club industry as a whole. That’s coming up.

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Striptease has a long history: At festivals in ancient Greece, women danced provocatively while undressing. But strip clubs as we know them began in the United States in the 20th century. Dave Manack has watched the industry evolve — he’s the publisher of the trade journal ED, or Exotic Dancer.

MANACK: Back in the 70s strip clubs, if you will, were very rough and tumble. Many of them were even owned by biker gangs. They were the kind of place that you probably would go in in a trench coat and a hat because you were scared to be seen going in. And then right around the mid 80s, what you had was this movement towards the upscale adult nightclub.

Many strip clubs began to feel more like any other nightclub.

MANACK: There are dancers there, but that’s not the primary focus. The idea was we want to elevate the way that not only the industry operates, but the way we’re perceived by the outside world. You want to attract a wider clientele. And you’ve also seen a movement over the past 20 years or so of women, couples going to adult nightclubs.

As clientele has expanded, strippers have sharpened their skills. If they want to take home a few hundred dollars each night, they need to target the right patrons.

LAYLA: There’s a saying that it only takes one. And it’s an odds game. You want to go up to as many people as you can, because that betters your odds of somebody wanting you. But sometimes you don’t have the energy to just go up to everybody, and so you can kind of suss out who likes you, on average. Like, you know, “that guy looks like he only likes white girls.” And there are racial stereotypes that are there. I’d be lying if I said that wasn’t how it operates in the club. Girls assume a lot about guys. And if you don’t have the energy to just go up to everybody, you’re going to want to stereotype, which is unfortunate. They do it to us, so it’s an equalizer in a way. Guys are like, “Oh, I just want a blonde.” And you can tell when a guy wants a blonde. There’s a look. 

As with other live-entertainment venues, the pandemic took a toll on strip clubs and the people who work in them. Manack estimates that around 200 clubs shut down during the pandemic, and never reopened. He says around 1,800 now remain in business in the U.S. Faced with an aging customer base, many of these establishments are wondering what today’s young men want from a strip club.

MANACK: That is the million dollar question, as far as what is going to bring the twenty-somethings into the clubs. That’s a whole generation of people that aren’t used to human-to-human interaction. I’m not saying no 20-year olds go to strip clubs, but I’m saying that that’s a generation that you’re going to have to look at them differently as customers. 

Those potential customers have gotten used to online platforms like OnlyFans, where adult performers offer videos, live streams, and personalized text chats, for a fee.

MANACK: Covid changed the dynamic for the adult nightclub industry, because you have customers that couldn’t go to clubs. So they got used to whatever interaction they would typically have with an entertainer, they started to have that interaction on OnlyFans. 

Some strippers set up OnlyFans accounts when the clubs were closed, and a few of them have earned big money catering to tens of thousands of fans at once. Layla was an early adopter, but she thinks the site’s impact is limited.

LAYLA: I think people overestimate the effect of OnlyFans on stripping. What you come to a strip club for is completely different than OnlyFans. The guys who are coming into a strip club, want a strip club. They want the touch. 

But she does think younger customers are looking for something they won’t find at most strip clubs.

LAYLA: People want something more intimate. When guys walk into the club, it’s kind of an intimidating experience. You get walked in by a guy in a suit. You get brought to a table. There’s a lot of pressure. It’s very intense. Younger guys don’t want that kind of experience. They don’t want to feel like they’re being sold to. They want something that feels real. 

In their quest to figure out how to draw this generation into the clubs and keep them there, owners are starting to invest in talent retention.

MANACK: Some clubs did things like renovating their locker rooms. Some even have tanning beds or other things to make it a more comfortable experience for the entertainers. Because if you’re in a larger city, you’re competing as a club not just for the customers, but you’re competing for the best entertainers. They’re going to dance where they know they can make money, but they also want to know they’re going to be treated well and valued for what they bring to the operation. 

Some strippers are pursuing other approaches. In the past few years, dancers at clubs in California and Oregon have voted to unionize. Washington state recently passed a law known as the Strippers’ Bill of Rights, which includes wide-ranging workplace protections for strippers. And, in response to the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, in some states strippers are being classified as employees, rather than independent contractors. But neither Manack nor Layla believes these developments will lead to industry-wide change. And dancers are in a tough position, because the number of places they can work is getting smaller.

MANACK: Cities and municipalities for years have done everything they can, for the most part, to close clubs down or keep them from opening. They’re just not looked at as a desirable business.

As a result of zoning laws and other regulations, it can be difficult — if not impossible — to open a new strip club. Manack says that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

MANACK: The better clubs, the better run clubs, the better operated clubs are the ones that are still here. It is not an industry for just anybody. You do have to fight a lot of battles. There are a lot of people that want to close you down. 

Layla is 28 years old, and she has no plans to stop stripping anytime soon.

LAYLA: I would retire, you know, when I feel like I’m in a place to. Right now, I am working less, compared to how I did when I was younger. That’s kind of common. You have to pace yourself to last in it, because, like, that’s kind of how girls burn out younger is that they just, like, party through it. You get better at the job. The way I work now is smarter. And I think the clientele that I have is better. You adjust as you get older if you want to survive. 

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For The Economics of Everyday Things, I’m Zachary Crockett. This episode was produced by Julie Kanfer and Sarah Lilley, and mixed by Jeremy Johnston. We had help from Daniel Moritz-Rabson. We found Layla through her very funny Twitter feed.

LAYLA: My Twitter handle is BotticelliBimbo.

Thanks for listening.

LAYLA: I enjoy being mansplained about stocks. Like, you’re drunk in the club telling me all this insider trading information. Thank you.